Displacing evil

Ephesians 5:15-20

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We have sung, I don’t know how many times this morning,
the inspiring mantra,
“Breathe out, breathe in, and be filled.”
It’s uplifting to our spirits to sing,
“breathe out, breathe in, and be filled.”
It’s comforting, it’s reassuring,
it just makes us want to be filled with the Spirit of God.

You may want to be filled,
but I would think twice, before you decide to do it.
It’s dangerous. Really.

Let me just remind you what happened to some other people
who very innocently decided to breathe in
and be filled with the Spirit of God.

The Old Testament prophets—Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Micah, Amos—
were often said to be filled with the Spirit.
That’s what enabled their work.
And that’s what got them in all kinds of trouble.
By the Spirit’s breath in them,
they delivered all kinds of unpopular messages—
pointing out sin, condemning injustice,
announcing doom and death to royalty.
They were often driven out of town
barely escaping with their lives . . . if they were lucky.
living on the meager rations of a kind widow,
or a raven sent by God.

We’re told Zechariah and Elizabeth were filled with the Spirit,
as was their son John the Baptist.
And what followed was a life of hardship for John,
and heartache for his parents.
John’s preaching, inspired by this Spirit,
got him thrown into prison, and eventually beheaded.

Of course, Jesus himself was filled with the Spirit.
We read in Luke 4,
“Full of the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.”
Being Spirit-filled earned Jesus forty days of hunger, thirst,
and multiple assaults by Satan in the wilderness.
And right after that we are told that Jesus,
“filled with the power of the Spirit,”
returned to Galilee, and began to teach in their synagogues.
Immediately the opposition moved in.
In the very next scene his own townspeople
tried to throw him off a cliff.
He escaped, but it only got worse,
and we all know where it ended.
Crucifixion.

The first believers in the early church
were all filled with the Spirit, we read in Acts 2.
They had good fellowship with each other,
but a terrible period of persecution and terrorism
was unleashed on members of this radical community.

Peter, while he was making his defense before the authorities,
according to Acts 4, was filled with the Spirit.
Immediately, they threw him in prison.

Stephen, one of the first deacons in the early church,
was “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6).
He began to preach the gospel,
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
He was stoned to death.

And Saul, after being prayed for by Ananias,
regained his sight and was filled with the Holy Spirit, it says.
And over the years, his preaching and evangelistic work
resulted in him being imprisoned, whipped, beaten, stoned,
shipwrecked, and, in his own words from 2 Corinthians,
“in danger from rivers, danger from bandits,
danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles,
danger in the city, danger in the wilderness,
danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters;
in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night,
hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.”

So, you want to breathe in and be filled with the Holy Spirit! . . .
It’s a noble thought.
But maybe you’d like some more time to think about it.
It’s not safe, being filled with the Spirit.

A few weeks ago when I shared excerpts of sermons from Columbus,
you heard Jim Schrag, retiring Executive of the denomination,
call on us in the church to “unfurl our sails”
to open the sails of our church,
and expect the wind of God to blow, to fill those sails,
and move us along.

But that’s risky business,
because the Spirit of God blows where it will.
If we open our sails to the wind of God,
there’s no way of knowing where we’ll end up.
We can’t predict or control the wind.
We may get blown away. We may be dead in the water.

So, you want to breathe in and be filled with the Spirit?
Take heed . . . watch out . . . you’re putting your life on the line.
Which, when you think about it,
is really the whole point of being filled with the Spirit.
It’s laying down your self-centered life,
in favor of living a life under the control of the Holy Spirit.

We would much prefer to think of
breathing in and being filled with the Spirit
as being something completely reassuring, gentle, peaceful.
The soft flutter of the wings of a white dove,
is so comforting, so tender.
And I’d be tempted to believe that,
if it wasn’t for the way the Bible talks about the Spirit.

Even at Jesus’ baptism, when a dove did descend from heaven,
the scene was not accompanied by harp music
and a softly glowing sky as a backdrop.
It was actually an explosive scene.
Mark says when Jesus came out of the water,
“he saw the heavens torn apart
and the Spirit descending like a dove.”
That Greek word for being torn apart, to split, to divide,
is only used one other time in Mark’s gospel—
when the veil of the temple is ripped from top to bottom,
at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross.
Interesting . . . that at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry,
and at the end,
something was ripped open violently,
and the barrier separating the divine and the human
was taken away.
That’s what happens when the Spirit blows in.
The barrier that makes us feel safe and secure,
is ripped apart.

Oh, but it’s a wonderful, exhilarating ripping apart.
Because this wild and wonderful Spirit of God
that blows in and takes us where we weren’t planning to go,
is the very same Spirit whose nature is
to give life and truth and beauty and goodness.

In Genesis 1, at Creation,
the Spirit of God blew on the dark and formless and chaotic
waters of the cosmos.
And the result was life—true, magnificent life.
God blew his breath into a lump of clay,
and a living, breathing, human soul was born.
God wants our lives to be filled with God’s breath.
So that we will live . . . truly live as God intended
when God created us in God’s own image.
_____________________

But we have a lot working against us,
when it comes to being filled with the Spirit.
Our lives are already filled . . .
with all sorts of other things that distract us from life.
They masquerade as life,
but in actuality, they diminish life.
Nothing new, of course.
This is precisely what the apostle saw happening
in the church of Asia Minor,
which prompted the letter to the Ephesians.

The church was being drawn away from a full life in God,
because they were allowing themselves to be filled with other things.
And you can’t be filled with two things at once.
You have a one-pint container filled with water,
and you pour in a cup of oil,
you’re going to lose a cup of water.
The water will be displaced.

I think that’s sort of what the apostle was telling the Ephesians,
in chapter 5, vv. 15-18.
“Be careful then how you live,
not as unwise people but as wise,
making the most of the time, because the days are evil.
Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery;
but be filled with the Spirit.”

There is a lot in this world to distract you
from the life God has in mind for you, Paul was saying.
So be careful. Be wise. Be discerning.
Understand what the will of God is, and live in it.
Surround yourself with that which is worthwhile.
Make the most of the time, because the days are evil.
Be filled with the Spirit,
because, simply, it will displace the evil
that otherwise might overtake you.

Another way of saying this might be,
don’t be overcome by fear of all the evil around you.
Displace the evil with the Holy Spirit.
Invite the Spirit of God to take its place.
Open yourself, breathe in . . .
invite the Spirit to fill every space,
and breathe out,
releasing whatever is life-diminishing,
releasing whatever there isn’t room for anymore,
releasing what the Spirit displaces.

These words from Ephesians are tremendously encouraging,
life-giving,
and burden-lifting.
It’s a refreshing approach to life in a sinful, broken, and violent world.
Yes, the days are evil.
We need not look far to realize that.
All around the world nations are falling apart,
awash in the evil of oppression, of poverty,
of natural and human-caused disasters.
There is also real personal evil all around.
Individuals who rebel against all that is good,
and wreak destruction and havok in other people’s lives.

Some people live in a near-constant state of panic,
in the face of all this overwhelming evil.
Afraid their own lives will crumble under the weight of it all.
Some people . . . many people . . .
deal with the pain and evil that life brings,
by trying to hide from it, conceal it, numb themselves to it.
That’s what v. 18 is about in Ephesians 5.
“Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.”

You cannot find freedom from pain and evil
by running from, trying to cover up,
or escaping into a drunken semiconsciousness.

No, you find freedom from evil, by displacing it.
Crowding it out.
Being filled with what is life-giving, and life-forming.
Vv. 19-20:
“Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves,
singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts,
giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That’s the way to live in an evil world.
Don’t wallow in ways of this world,
the fear-mongering,
the hand-wringing,
the foolishness of living by your fears,
drinking yourself into numbness and oblivion.
No, the way to deal with the evil world,
is to get together and sing! Sing!!
Yes, that’s what Paul says.
Sing out the evil, by singing in the Spirit.

This is communal spiritual engagement against evil, and the evil one.
You sing away the devil.
The Ephesians text we looked at last Sunday said
don’t let the sun go down on your anger,
because “it makes room for the devil.”
The devil can’t live where there’s no room, so to speak.
The gathering together of Christians
to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs
displaces the devil . . .
because singing the music of the Spirit
invites the Spirit to fill us.

I’ll tell you what.
The next time you turn on the news and get depressed by it,
the next time you find yourself in an emotional funk,
because you see no way out of the mess this world is in,
the next time you get discouraged and hopeless
by the violence in the Middle East,
by the abuse of power in Washington,
by the wanton destruction of polar caps and rainforests,
by the millions of war refugees around the world,
by the chronic homelessness in Harrisonburg,
by the institutional paralysis of the church,
the next time any personal, or systemic, evil
starts pulling you down . . .
I have a concrete suggestion for you.
It will work every time. Guaranteed.

Get on the phone, call up some friends from church,
invite them over, and tell them to bring their hymnals.
I mean that literally.
Have a little community hymn sing.
I can assure you,
as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
the Holy Spirit will be present in your singing,
and the spirit of death and destruction and evil
that would like to overtake and overwhelm us,
will be displaced.
It will be crowded out.

And no, this is not an escape mechanism.
Not at all.
We don’t sing so we forget about the evil.
We don’t sing to distract ourselves from it.
We sing, so we are equipped to deal with it.
So we are not overcome by it,
but able to confront it,
and transform it.
When the last chord of the hymn dies away,
we still have our work to do,
or rather, God’s work to do.

But singing will reorient us to the truth of the gospel.
That in Jesus Christ,
God saves, redeems, transforms, and reconciles.
And we are invited to collaborate with the Holy Spirit
in that saving mission of God.

So let’s not delay another moment.
Let us sing the Spirit into us right now.
Into our personal beings.
Into our collective being as a church.

Turn to #349 in Hymnal: A Worship Book.
“Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me.”
I invite us to sing it through once, as written,
for ourselves . . .
then sing it a second time, as a collective body.
“Spirit of the living God fall afresh on us.
Melt us, mold us, fill us, use us.”

—Phil Kniss, August 16, 2009



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Yes, I'm a hypocrite

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

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There’s a sermon point preachers have made so often over the years,
it’s beyond cliche.
It goes like this:
If you ask people why they don’t go to church,
one of the main excuses is, the church is full of hypocrites.
And then the preacher goes on to say what a sorry excuse that is
for not going to church.

Well, I’m here to say that’s not just an excuse.
It is a statement of fact.
The church is, without a doubt, full and overflowing with hypocrites.
I am one of them.
And so are you. All of you.

Being a hypocrite is part of the human condition.
It is common to us all.
We didn’t start out as hypocrites.
And by hypocrite, I mean,
we live with a gap in our lives.
A gap between what we say and what we do.
A separation between what we believe and what we act on.
This separation, this fragmentation,
is a form of human brokenness, of sin.

But we didn’t start out fragmented.
We were created as whole persons.
In the image of God, we were created.
Whole in body, mind, and spirit.
Of course, some among us have been born
with certain specific limitations in body or mind,
sometimes severe limitations.
Yet in every human life there is the image of God,
complete and whole as God intended,
whether or not we are capable of seeing it.
But over time, we become less whole.
We make wrong choices.
We sin against our creator, and against each other.
We live in opposition to God’s intentions of wholeness.
We disconnect the various parts of ourselves from each other.
And we become fragmented.
In other words, we become hypocrites.
We lose our integrity, our integration, our wholeness.

But you know, being fragmented is hardly seen as a problem
by most people these days.
It’s come to be expected.
Especially of any public figure—
athletes, entertainers, politicians.
Even, to some extent, of church leaders.
We’ve gotten jaded to the fact that one part of a person’s life
is not going to square with another part.
So we give these heroic public figures a free pass.
If we love what they’re doing in Washington,
or on the movie screen,
or on the football field,
or in the concert hall,
or in the classroom,
or behind the pulpit . . .
If they’re a genius in their respective fields,
we more easily look the other way
when something sleazy shows up in their personal life,
when we learn their lives are not integrated,
that there is a disconnect, a lack of integrity.

The examples are almost infinite,
if we pay attention at all to the news.

Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Mark Sanford,
Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Mel Gibson,
Pete Rose, Michael Vick, Alex Rodriguez,
Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard,
. . . or closer to home—John Howard Yoder.
These are just a tiny fraction of the names of
public figures with private failings that became public.

And in nearly every case,
the person has raving fans that come to their defense,
and cry foul.
They claim a person’s private life
has nothing to do with their public life.
That their work, or their art, or their athleticism,
or their politics, or their intellect,
should be judged on its own merits.
What they do behind closed doors is off-limits.

Some of us remember well, during Clinton’s presidency,
the public debate that swirled,
around whether his private morality
should be connected to his performance as a president.
Public opinion polls showed a majority of persons
believed he lacked personal integrity,
and was not personally trustworthy.
But a majority still approved of his job as a president.
In other words,
“Okay, so he lies, he cheats on his wife,
he uses people in his private life.
But he’s a good president, so let’s leave him alone.”
And he certainly wasn’t the first president
for which people looked the other way,
when questions of personal morality or integrity were raised.

Two items in sports news in recent weeks, illustrate the same dynamic.
No sooner did football star Michael Vick finish his prison sentence,
than sportswriters everywhere
are calling for his full and immediate reinstatement to the NFL.
As if just serving his time has rehabilitated him to the point
where he can again be a public role model for our youth.
A couple weeks ago it was revealed that
Red Sox sluggers David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez
were on a list of players in 2003
who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
The same day the news broke,
Ortiz hits a go-ahead home run,
and the Sox fans give him a standing ovation
until he came out of the dugout for a curtain call.
And Ramirez commented it’s not a big deal to them or the fans,
they’re just going to keep on hitting the ball.

Any of us who are devoted fans of a public figure with private failings,
have to ask ourselves,
are we content to keep accepting this clear separation
between private morality and public performance
that our society has come to view as normal?

Integrity—that is, wholeness, integration of public and private life—
ought to mean something.
There is something wrong with carving up our human experience
into separate and disconnected parts,
which have separate and disconnected standards of behavior.
Over here is how we think.
And over here is how we act.
Over here is our private life.
And over here is our public life.
Over here is how we relate to ourselves.
And over here is how we relate to other people.
And over there is how we relate to God.
When these segments of our lives
get disconnected from each other,
what we have is a state of brokenness.
A lack of wholeness. Absence of shalom. Dis-integration. Sin.
_____________________

The message of Ephesians is good news for the dis-integrated.
Because it announces the wholeness we can have, in Jesus Christ.
In Jesus we have the perfect example of perfect integrity.
Jesus was a whole person.
What he believed he lived.
How he understood himself,
squared with how he related to others,
which squared with how he related to God.
There was consistency and completeness in the person of Jesus.
He lived out what God intended for us all,
when God created us in God’s own image.
So if we, as Christian believers, take on Christ,
we take on wholeness, integrity.
Or to put it in the words of Ephesians,
we “clothe ourselves with the new self,
created according to the likeness of God
in true righteousness and holiness.”

This new righteousness, which we have in Christ,
is one that speaks truth rather than falsehood.
We find this in the first verse of today’s text from Ephesians.
Chapter 4, verse 25.

In this verse, and the ones that come after it
(you might want to follow along),
the apostle issues all kinds of directives.
Do this, but do not do that.
Take on this, but put away that.
I count fourteen distinct commands in these few verses.
But the fascinating thing is,
the apostle is not just dictating a set of rules.
He is presenting an argument.
He is making a rational case,
for living a life of full integrity.

He says, “Don’t lie.”
but not because lying is on a list of bad things to do,
not because it’s one of the Ten Commandments.
No, he says don’t lie, because, and I quote,
“we are members of one another.”
Lying separates us from others.
It creates distance, pulls us apart.
It destroys integrity.
We speak truthfully because we belong to each other,
and we take that belonging seriously.

And going down the list, we see the same thing with all 14 commands.
This list of wrongdoings—
they separate, they undermine integrity, they dis-integrate us.

V. 26, be angry, but don’t sin.
Don’t let the resentment build up.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,
because it will get in the way of your relationships.
And because, v. 27, it will “make room for the devil,”
the Great Dis-Integrator.

V. 28, don’t steal.
Because when we work honestly with our own hands, he says,
we will have enough that we can share with the needy.
Working honestly strengthens bonds.
Thievery destroys bonds. Destroys integrity.
Working and sharing with each other builds integrity.

And v. 29, concerning evil talk, don’t do it because it tears down.
Instead, (quote) “speak only what is useful for building up . . .
so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”

V. 30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit,
because the Spirit intends to redeem you,
to return you to wholeness.
So don’t do anything to undermine God’s good design on you.

V. 31-32, put away all those things that drive a wedge
between yourself and others—
bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander, and all malice.
But reach out toward the other, open yourself to the other,
(quote) “be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
Because . . . forgiveness rebuilds the bonds,
it rebuilds that integrity that God designed for you.

Imitate God, (v.1 of ch. 5) live in love,
because Christ loves us,
because Christ, the Redeemer, the Great Integrator,
gave up everything for our wholeness, for our integration.
_____________________

But it’s not just in the Bible that we hear these calls to integrity.
I was in my car last Tuesday when I heard it on WMRA,
on “Talk of the Nation.”
Neal Conan was interviewing psychologist Robert Feldman, author of
The Liar in Your Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships.
He says we all engage in what are known as “little white lies,”
lies that function as a social lubricant.
Like, “Doing fine, thanks for asking.” Even when you’re not.
Or saying, “Hey, it was really great to see you,”
as you pull yourself away from an awkward, unwelcomed encounter.

Let me quote a little of what Feldman said on the radio,
which I got off the transcript later.
I quote: “Little white lies do matter . . . [they lead to] lack of authenticity
in our everyday life.
We don’t really know where we stand.
We don’t really ever get a good sense of who we are
and what our strengths and weaknesses are . . .
if people are constantly not telling us the truth . . .
[Lies] take a toll in social relationships . . .
By asking others to tell us the truth—
and I think you do have to go out of your way
to ask others to be truthful to you—
you’re going to have a better understanding of who you are
and you’re going to end up leading a more authentic life.”
End of quote.

It’s not so surprising, and perhaps not even troubling,
that we all experience a certain lack of authenticity in our lives.
We are hypocrites.
We are human beings,
and it’s part of the human condition.
The troubling thing about lying is not that we do it.
It’s that doing it has become perfectly acceptable.
We don’t expect people to live with whole integrity anymore.
We expect the play-acting, the games, the white lies.
And the more we accept and excuse,
the larger the lies become,
the bigger the betrayal, the darker the deceit,
until the most offensive public behavior
hardly gets a reaction.

With the writer of Ephesians,
I appeal to all of us hypocrites, myself included,
to raise the standard again,
to bring back together what has been separated,
to close the gap.
I challenge us to expect deeper honesty
in our communications with each other.
And as we do so,
to also expect a more generous grace
and forebearance of one another.
Honesty must be accompanied by grace.

We avoid complete honesty
because we think we are protecting others.
But in that act of concealing the truth,
we distance ourselves from others.
And integrity suffers, because we are members of each other.



God has given us a wonderful gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.
That salvation is whole salvation.
It is salvation of spirit, of body, of mind, of relationships.
In Jesus Christ, God saves us
from being broken and fragmented
and alienated and abandoned.
In Jesus Christ, God makes us whole.
God restores the wholeness he created us with.
God recreates in us the image of God.
We are made new
as we give ourselves over to God who makes all things new.

Will you join me in prayer?

Creator God, who by your love made us whole,
we come to you this morning aware of continuing brokenness.
By your love, will you continue to make us whole?
We confess that we have lost integrity,
that we are disconnected
from ourselves, from each other, and from you.
We act in ways that are inconsistent with what we say.
We say things that are inconsistent with what we believe.
And we have drifted apart from each other,
we have become strangers to our true selves,
and we have offended you, our Creator.
Lord, in the silence of these moments,
bring to our minds those areas of our lives
where integrity has suffered.
. . . . . . . . .
God of all wholeness,
God who offers to make us new in Christ Jesus,
we are repenting.
We are turning from that which fragments us,
and turning toward that which makes us whole.

Slowly turning, ever turning from our lovelessness like ice,
from our unforgiving spirit, from the grip of envy’s vice,
Slowly turning, ever turning toward the lavish life of spring,
toward the word of warmth and pardon, toward the mercy welcoming.

Slowly turning, ever turning from our ego-centered gaze,
from our self-enclosing circle, from our narrow, petty ways,
Slowly turning, ever turning toward the foreigner as friend,
toward the city without ghetto, toward the greatness without end.

Slowly turning, ever turning from our fear of death and loss,
from our terror of the darkness, from our scorning of the cross,
Slowly turning, ever turning toward the true and faithful one,
toward the light of daybreak dawning, toward the phoenix-risen sun!

Amen.

Let us sing together #23, in Sing the Journey.

—Phil Kniss, August 9, 2009



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Breathe in and be filled

John 20:21-22, Ephesians 4:1-16

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There is no sermon manuscript provided, due to the nature of this sermon. My words are relatively few, as I give a general background, and then introduce each of six different audio excerpts of six of the sermons given at Mennonite Church USA's biennial convention at Columbus, Ohio, June 28-July 4, 2009. Enjoy this sermon by listening to the audio or watching the video.



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